Mystery Archives - Night Owl Reads

The Evolution of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Evolution of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #2) by Michelle Hodkin

In continuation of my reading + reviewing spree, I will now talk about The Evolution of Mara Dyer, book 2 in the Mara Dyer series by the lovely Michelle Hodkin. Disclaimer: Using links from this post to buy a copy of the book will earn me a small commission that will help with maintaining this blog. Well, the first book had a cliffhanger that left me confused. There were a lot of unresolved issues. Is Jude alive or is it all in her head? Did she really cause the collapse of the asylum? How did she get powers? Why is Noah Shaw so annoyingly lovable? Hehehe. Normally, I drop books that I don’t enjoy reading but I could not just let this one slide. The first book was so and so, and I was so curious as to what the hell is really going on. Plus, I wanted to read more about Noah, the perfect boyfriend. In the end, curiosity, the need to finish a series, and Noah Shaw’s hawtness trump my somewhat disappointment of this story. See, I have no idea what makes this cover attractive. It just is. There’s something poetic in the way the couple is reaching for each other like that. I’m not exactly good with words but I hope you get what I mean. I may get this book for vanity. Maybe someday I would feel differently about it when if I re-read it. Mara Dyer is selfish. But I guess we all are when we’re in love. The more she tries to be normal, the crazier she seems to be. With all the things that happened to her, everything she’s seen and heard, the more she got paranoid. She has also become very clingy, clingy as a cling wrap. Overprotective boyfriend Noah Shaw stays by her side most of the time and even spends a lot of time with her family and has sleepovers and such. He’s still perfect, and still too much everything. With all his family’s riches, he can do whatever he wants, and what he does is do everything for Mara. For her sanity. Lots of lovey dovey, cheesy lines, and conspiracy ensue as they try to figure out the truth. After confirming her suspicions, Mara does something crazy (to keep her family out of harm’s way) that sends her to a mental facility. Noah does something crazy to get sent there as well. They investigate, find out some things, gets into trouble, and things go downhill from there. Like really bad. Other characters worth noting, Daniel Dyer is still the sweetest brother ever. ’nuff said. “I wish she knew that I think she’s the most hilarious person on Earth. And that whenever she’s not home, I feel like I’m missing my partner in crime.” Jamie Roth is the comic relief. Just when things are too serious, he’s there to make a funny/sarcastic remark. I’d like to think he keeps mara sane inside the mental institution. There are other unimportant characters I’d rather not talk about. Read more

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer #1) by Michelle Hodkin

Based on the description, what caught my interest is the mystery behind the death of Mara’s friends and how she is involved in it. I had the feeling that she was responsible and I was dying to find out if she did kill them and how. My name is not Mara Dyer. But my lawyer told me to choose something. I wanted a copy of this book for vanity purposes. It looked like a great addition to my ever growing book collection. There is something beautiful in the way the couple in the cover are holding each other underwater. Though it doesn’t portray anything that has to do with the story. Mara seems like a regular teenage girl, but after surviving the accident that killed her friends, she started to lose it. She was seeing ghosts and hallucinating things, which wasn’t healthy or normal. She knew how to handle herself and put up a front of normalcy to avoid being sent to a mental institution. I’m not sure how I feel about her though. I can’t connect with her but as she grew paranoid, the more I wanted to find out what happened to her and her friends that fateful night. Noah Shaw was described in a way where you’re supposed to hate him but you’ll end up loving him anyway. I guess we all love bad boys, right? He has a reputation of being a womanizer, somewhat a jerk, but how he interacted with Mara made me think it was all a front. He had a reputation to uphold after all. After a while, he did things that were too sweet and swoon-worthy. I guess the bad things about him were there to balance out how perfect he really is. Noah Shaw is probably the kind of book boyfriend we all want to have.Daniel Dyer. The older brother who I can’t help but love as well. He’s smart, caring, and always has Mara’s back. He’s literally too good to be true. Then again, this is fiction. Jamie Roth is the kind of guy best friend I want. At first I thought he was a legit guy, evetually he seemed gay, but it was mentioned (might be in the second book) that he is in fact, bi-sexual. He seems too gay to be bi. He’s the funny person in the story. His banter with Mara is just perf. I’m not elaborating on the other characters since I don’t want to spoil it for anybody who hasn’t read the book yet. Michelle writes beautifully. I was not bored, my eyes did not skip the words, and I could picture the story in my mind. I could have finished the book in one sitting. That’s how good it was to read her words. UPDATE: I kind of regret not going to the book signing because I saw the pictures and heard the stories and Michelle Hodkins is a beautiful person inside and out. I guess it wasn’t meant to be because I was broke Read more

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #1) by Ransom Riggs

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs is the first book in the series. It is a mysterious paranormal fantasy, with a hint of time travel, for young adults. It was published on June 7th 2011 by Quirk and I won a hardbound copy from one of Sporadic Reads‘ giveaways. I read this from April 19 to 30, 2014, hoping I would finish it in time for the book signing. Spoiler: I didn’t. This review may contain spoilers. Read at your own risk. The first time my eyes laid upon the cover of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, I immediately concluded that it was not a story I would like. The cover looked scary and the pictures in the book were creepy looking. I did, however, find it interesting because of how popular it became. It was in the top 10 list of local bookstores and I’ve seen it in book blogs. I received a copy of the book back in December after winning Dre’s giveaway. I honestly did not expect to win, but I did, and when asked what book I wanted, I told her she could give me any book she highly recommended. Knowing her taste and how similar our interests are, I was confident that she would make a great choice. She had it sent to a branch near me so I could pick it up anytime. I didn’t even ask what title she chose nor did she tell me what it was. Now that I finished reading it, I can say that it is one of the best surprises I received. After giving it some thought, I gave this book a Goodreads rating of 5. Initially I wanted to give it a 4, but I think it is amazing how Riggs used random photos and created a story out of it. I have tons of photos in our photo albums but I don’t think I could ever come up with something like what he did. The pictures are so creepy looking and accompanied with the story Riggs came up with, it felt so real. After reading some Goodreads review, a lot of people say that it’s a rip off of X-men. Although it may be the case, I don’t hold it against Riggs. There’s still something new and different to this world. As for the characters, Jacob is just a normal boy who loved his grandfather so much. He grew up listening to stories about the war and monsters his grandfather fought, and the children he grew up with. Jacob believed they were real because of the proof, the pictures of peculiar children his grandpa showed him. But as he grew older, the more it seemed like his grandpa was losing his mind. Maybe from PTSD or age. Everything changed when his grandpa was attacked and he saw who did it. The peculiar children are just that, peculiar. They have special abilities, like X-men, and they live in a loop. The loop is like Supernatural’s every day is Tuesday. The day repeats on the same date every Read more

Savage (Daughters of the Jaguar #1) by Willow Rose

Savage is the first book in the Daughters of the Jaguar series by Willow Rose. The first time I laid my eyes on the cover, I just knew I had to read it. Savage was an interesting read. It explained a lot of things about the story and the background was laid out one after the other. We are reading the story in Christian’s first-person point-of-view as it revolves around him and his experience when he moved from Denmark to Florida for his medical studies in the 80s. He was taken in by a wealthy family who welcomed him to their home with open arms…widely open arms to the point that the head of the family, the doctor, bought him a new car, a windsurf board, and eventually paid offered to pay for the rest of his college tuition. Christian’s future in Florida seemed to be heading in a promising direction until that incident that changed his life forever. Sulking in his thoughts and wallowing in self-pity, he wanted explanations with how he survived, if there is any rational explanation for what happened. He eventually became obsessed with life after death and jaguars, reading every book he could get his hands on regarding those subjects. He was aware of the change within himself, I guess near-death experiences really changes ones perspective. To top it off, he acquired supernatural abilities that made him think he was going crazy. Like him, I was intrigued with the strange family next door. Although I had an idea who and what they were, I couldn’t wait to get to the part where that was revealed. He meets a lovely woman named Aiyana, who divulged things about her family like it was the most normal thing to do. She felt like she knew him personally even though they just met. I thought it was weird even after it was explained.The writing was pretty good, you could tell it was researched well, although I think it was laid out too much. Like Christian, I wanted more of Aiyana. She is just so mysterious and I wish we could see her point-of-view as well. The sexual situations were mostly mild. A little bit of description but not much heat in it. Still would not recommend it to teens under 16. I wish there was more about the strange family of women, and I also found the ending quite sad because they chose a more “sensible” path. Maybe we would find out why in the next book, I am intrigued with how that would pan out. I haven’t read much shape-shifter stories to compare this one with, but I enjoyed reading and am looking forward to the rest of the series. AUTHOR BIO Willow Rose writes Paranormal Romance, fantasy and mystery. Originally from Denmark she now lives on Florida’s Space Coast with her husband and two daughters. She is a huge fan of Anne Rice and Isabel Allende. When she is not writing or reading she enjoys to watch the Read more

Starters (Starters #1) by Lissa Price

Starters was disappointing. I read this book because the premise was interesting. It was, as well as intriguing, till after 40% into it. That’s when it started falling apart. The whole story felt like it was all over the place. There were A LOT of inconsistencies and questionable details. The age difference alone is not possible even with the circumstances. The writing was okay, world building was done sloppily in my opinion. I understand some of the things and tried looking past them, but as I reached the end, that’s when I felt like the plot was a stretch. There was a solution presented in the end that would seem like something the characters involved should have done in the first place, if it was just that easy. I’d say it was anti-climactic. The love angle has its moments, at one point I did like Blake but what do we really know about him? He’s attracted to Callie for no apparent reason and he did things for her without question. As for Michael, he’s been with Callie for so long that there’s a silent mutual understanding that they’ll be together after everything. Then again, we don’t know anything about him either. I don’t remember being giddy with any scenes involving either guy. The revelation in the end was unexpected for some but it crossed my mind 90% into the book. I think that would be the only reason for me to read its sequel, Enders, to find out WHY and HOW that surprise in the end became like that.

The Bad Beginning (A Series of Unfortunate Events #1) by Lemony Snicket

I finished this (e)book a month ago and i forgot to write something about it. The Baudelaire children are truly unfortunate and it was painful to read their story because everything was not going well for them. Just as you think things would be better, it would go the other way. It was an easy read, with much less pages than the other books i read, i finished in just days. I couldn’t help but compare it with the movie, and i now understand why the movie had scenes that would happen in later books. It has a short plot but very well described. Another thing i like with Lemony Snicket is that he explains the meaning of words that might be hard for little children to understand. I’m not sure when i’ll be able to read the rest of the series but i surely want to finish them all and find out what fortune awaits the Baudelaire children.

Living Dead in Dallas by Charlaine Harris

Living Dead in Dallas (Sookie Stackhouse #2) by Charlaine Harris

Living Dead in Dallas is the 2nd book from The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. The second season of HBO’s True Blood is loosely based in this book. Because the books focus on Sookie and her adventures, we don’t actually know what happened in Bon Temps while she was doing a job with Bill for the Dallas vampires. But before she left for Dallas, she encountered the maenad Callisto. Like what i mentioned in my previous post about this series, Lafayette died in the beginning of this book. That and the maenad’s presence was merely a side story which Sookie had to take care of when she got back from Dallas. The story focused on the Dallas vampires as one of their “brothers” went missing and they needed Sookie’s special ability to find out what happened to him. They had a hunch that The Fellowship of the Sun was behind it but they needed to be sure. Later we find out that the vampire Farell was captured with the help of Godric/Godfrey, who wanted to face his true death by burning under the sun. Unlike the show, Jason Stackhouse was nowhere near the Fellowship, Steve Newlin is an old man, and Godric/Godfrey is not Eric Northman’s maker. I happen to like Godric from the show, his existence and relationship with Eric made them seem more human. But Godfrey in the books was just a pedophile who raped and killed children, sucking them dry. Although it seems like he repented when he realized his sins and decided to take his life by facing the sun. Another difference between the show and the book is that Tara and Eggs have already been going out. Sookie knew Tara from high school and they were not best friends since they were kids. Eggs and the maenad didn’t die too, although a whole bunch of townsfolk DID die when the maenad took their lives as a “proper tribute” to her. Also, Sam was running/spending time in the woods with the maenad, not another shapeshifter. If you’ve seen the show, they made it look like Sam encountered the maenad before and he hates her guts and he killed her in the end.

Genre: Mystery